Within the next decade, cancer will replace heart disease as the leading cause of death, according to National Cancer Institutes and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Early diagnosis of cancer is of paramount significance to prognosis, staging, and treatment selection. Conventional imaging techniques, even when computer-assisted, typically produce images attributed to the anatomy and structure of the tumor and surrounding tissue, instead of the physiology and pathology of the tumor itself. As a result, classical imaging techniques are less than ideal tools for cancer diagnosis and assessment.
Optical imaging provides a detailed description of biological tissues. For instance, it allows the characterization of a variety of diseases, such as breast cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the bladder, and the analysis of molecular pathways leading to diseases. Functional imaging and molecular imaging have been introduced to describe new imaging paradigms. Specifically, functional imaging refers to the capability of non-invasively monitoring physiological processes, primarily based on blood flow and cellular metabolism. On the other hand, molecular imaging is a subset of functional imaging, which refers to imaging specifically targeted processes and pathways in cells and tissues.
More sensitive and specific optical imaging techniques, at the molecular level, that are capable of providing both metabolic and physiological information, could play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Better imaging could permit/allow for better diagnostic and therapeutic solutions to be applied selectively to the tumor, and could be used to better facilitate localized surgical interventions, such as detection of margins, ablation, endoscopy, and lumpectomy, that allow limited diseased areas to be treated more drastically. Better imaging could also facilitate minimally invasive monitoring of therapeutic response. Thus, the development of high specificity and high sensitivity optical imaging technologies would assist oncologists in developing gene-to-gene receptor-specific therapies, earlier cancer diagnosing, choosing stage-specific treatment options, and accurate assessment and follow-up. Therefore, priority should be given to the development of imaging technologies with enhanced specificity and sensitivity, capable of identifying the presence of cancer, as well as the stage, distribution, and type of cancer.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved imaging techniques that can be used for, among other things, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer.